05 March, 2016

How the Bernie Sanders crowd can still win

The media
and the political class have called it — Bernie Sanders has lost
the Democratic Presidential nomination. They are flat wrong, and not
for the first time.

Here’s the
real story: the Sanders campaign is changing the laws of political
physics — just like Trump did, only far more profoundly. The Bernie
crowd is building the most extraordinary grassroots momentum I have
ever seen. The movement is gathering strength by the day, and its
chances to win are growing fast.

I write from
first-hand experience: I am reporting from inside the Bernie
campaign. Having observed dozens of campaigns around the world
before, I have never seen anything quite like this. The media are
telling their own stale and circular story of stalled momentum,
defeat and superdelegate-powered inevitability. Meanwhile the Bernie
movement is growing faster than Facebook did — and in much the same
way.

[...]

I saw in my
native Britain last year how a similarly passionate movement crashed
the Labour Party and elected left-winger Jeremy Corbyn to the
leadership. He was a 100-1 outside shot without much charisma, and
the media wrote him off too. But the Corbyn crowd won by a landslide
— and they didn’t have one-tenth of the strength or
sophistication of the Bernie crowd.

I’m
talking about the Bernie crowd because that’s what this campaign is
– crowd-sourced, crowd-funded, teeming with leadership and
initiative. Bernie is their vehicle, bringing them together and
opening the doors. While Trump is a media warlord running his own
dark ISIS-like insurgency, Bernie is tribune, inspirer, educator,
organiser.

[...]

This is a
popular wave, a democratic crowd, the polar opposite of a mob. The
Bernie supporters I’ve met are overwhelmingly thoughtful,
passionate, serious people who have finally found a politics they can
believe in. Finally, they are discovering their strength in numbers.
And they are becoming a tidal wave.

I’ve asked
dozens of Bernie supporters what they mean by political revolution,
and the answer is modest and extraordinarily consistent: it’s about
ending corruption, taking back American democracy for the many, and
enabling everyone to live a normal, happy, fulfilling life. Their
critique is acute and resonates far beyond the liberal left into
conservative and rural strongholds. Their prescriptions are gathering
force.

[...]

Can Bernie
win? Hell, yes. Is it inevitable? Not by a long shot. But citizens
getting involved is what will decide the outcome, not media talking
heads, Washington suits or billionaires’ cash.

And what if,
having overcome extraordinary odds to become a real contender, Bernie
falls just short of the nomination? What if his campaign doesn’t
grow fast enough to beat the machine the Clintons built for decades?

In the most
important sense, he has already won. The Bernie crowd is here to
stay.